You Need to Make Your Start-Up Business Soar
Forty-plus years of starting and growing (and starting and abandoning, and starting and selling) upstart businesses – as well as watching others do the same – has given me lots of ideas about why and how entrepreneurial businesses succeed and fail.
I’ve written books about entrepreneurship before, and I am generally happy with them –especially Ready, Fire, Aim. But I still have at least one book on that topic inside me that wants to come out. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, and I’m finally getting it done.
It’s related to a thesis I have written about before: that there are basically two kinds of business leaders – those that have the personalities and skills to grow new businesses, and those that have the personalities and skills to manage businesses once they have reached a certain size.
Since putting that thesis out there in speeches, essays, and in business meetings, I have expanded my thesis to include eight more personality types.
The successful founders and business leaders I know usually possess not just one, but two or three or even more of these traits. Moreover, they have the ability to recognize these traits in others – and they do everything they can to seek out and be surrounded by partners and key employees who have them, especially the ones that they themselves lack.
That’s the idea that I’m trying to turn into a book.
As I move along with this project, I’ll be publishing sections of it here to solicit your feedback. Today, I’d like to start with an outline of the 10 personality types I’ve identified. I’ve organized them into four groups, based on how important they are to the business and how hard they are to find.
Please take a look and let me know what you think.
Group One: Extremely Rare and Absolutely Essential
Percent of the working population: 1 out of 50
1. Starters
Starters have the very unusual trait of thoroughly enjoying the challenge of, well, starting from scratch! Part of that is an almost unnatural amount of self-confidence. Part of it is an immunity to the fear of failure. And some of it, I sometimes think, is a kind of mental mishap – a missing emotional bolt in the part of the brain that is designed for common sense. (I say that without a drop of condescension or disrespect. I don’t have the Starter gene, and I’m not happy about it. My best business launches and non-business projects were either started by someone else before I hooked up with them or were “started” by me only after finding someone smart and ambitious with the Starter gene to take on that part of the job.)
Notable characteristics: Alertness, enthusiasm, eagerness, a natural (not necessarily earned) sense of self-confidence, and a generally upbeat personality.
2. Growers
Growers are inspired by the ambition of growing the business. And once they get moving, they are relentless in pushing for expansion, no matter how much work is involved. They are willing to work long hours – nights, weekends, vacations – and they quietly expect their colleagues and subordinates to do the same.
Growers understand that growth creates disruption and disruption leaves behind a mess. They recognize that someone has to clean up the messes they create, but they believe – correctly – that the business is better served when they keep pushing forward and let others handle the cleanup.
Growers also understand that there are basically three ways to grow a business: By increasing the number of customers. By increasing the number of products that customers purchase. And by increasing the amount of money that customers spend on those products. Thus, Growers see their job through the screen of marketing, sales, and product development.
Though their primary motivation is revenue growth, Growers understand that unless that growth comes with a healthy profit margin, its value may be an illusion.
The ideal combination for profitable growth is to have, at the helm of the company, equal stress on growth and profitability. The happiest situation is when the founder or CEO has the characteristics for both, but that is rare. A much more likely situation is to have two personalities who respect and appreciate one another working together towards the combined objective.
Notable characteristics: Passion, intensity and drive, an almost super-human energy for growth showing itself as single-mindedness, relentlessness, and a very low tolerance for doubts and details that threaten to slow growth.
Group Two: Rare and Extremely Helpful
Percent of the working population: 1 out of 20
3. Bottom Liners
Bottom Liners are motivated almost entirely by profits. Put differently, they care much more about the bottom line than the top line. However, the best ones, like the best Growers, recognize that the primary goal of the business is profitability, so they work cooperatively with Starters and Growers to find a healthy balance between profit margins and growth.
Bottom Liners are often the ones who turn a fast-growing business into a sustainably profitable one. Once they take responsibility for a business or division, they begin looking for inefficiencies everywhere – pricing, costs, terms, staffing, and capital allocation. They negotiate hard, cut intelligently, and make decisions based on financial reality rather than optimism.
Like Growers, Bottom Liners are willing to make tough decisions. And like the best Growers, the best Bottom Liners possess the rare skill of knowing how to execute difficult decisions fairly and deliver bad news gracefully.
Notable characteristics: Meticulous in thinking, hard driving in their work habits, willing to do whatever it takes to produce a healthy bottom line. Bottom Liners are smart in just about every possible way. They are comfortable thinking about the big picture, but just as comfortable dissecting details to come up with solutions for recurring problems miles away from the central offices. They are smart emotionally, too, knowing how to get their job done, which includes cutting budgets, eliminating non-essential workers, and reducing benefits and privileges. They are motivated almost exclusively by seeing the net income grow from year to year because they understand that without profit growth, the business is always a year away from disaster.
4. Pushers
All of the personality types discussed so far can push. The reason I list Pushers separately is that their motivation is not tied to some metric of performance such as revenue or profit growth. What charges them up is just getting things done. And that means they are happy to apply their superpower to whatever job they are assigned to lead.
It’s for that reason that you will find Pushers in leadership roles throughout any well-functioning and fast-growing business. Whether it is accounting, customer service, production, data entry, fulfillment, etc., the larger the company grows, the more important it is for each of these non-marketing functions to work well.
Pushers will push for hitting or exceeding production goals, meeting or beating deadlines, and demanding accountability from everyone. Good Pushers get the job done, come hell or high water, regardless of the human cost. They do so because they see themselves as working for the business and not for anyone or everyone else. If they must stub a few toes or hurt a few feelings to accomplish the goal, they are willing to have it happen. The best Pushers, however, possess the magical ability to get people to work longer and harder than they are inclined to or even want to without making them feel like they are being pushed.
Notable characteristics: Relentlessness, drive, the ability to focus intently on a goal, persistence, the ability to convey urgency and purpose, and a low tolerance for any sort of behavior that unnecessarily slows down the job.
5. Inventors
Inventors understand marketing and sales at a master level, but they have an extra superpower: They take pride in being able to predict what new products or product variants will be successful and which ones won’t. They can do that because they understand that what motivates prospects to buy is almost always more complicated and more subtle than the product’s obvious qualities.
This ability is, obviously, not common. And since it is more a product of the limbic brain (rather than the rational brain), it’s not a skill that can be easily taught or learned. That uniqueness gives Inventors the ability to help the business grow in a way that Growers and Drivers can’t.
Inventors are always thinking about the next thing to sell. They understand that when a customer buys something, what they are most likely to want next is some version of that same thing – an upgrade, a variation for a different use, or something that feels more valuable because it is scarcer, better designed, or more prestigious. So, they focus on creating “one-step-removed” products – keeping the essential elements the same while changing one key feature. And they are eager to test quickly because they assume – correctly – that competitors are watching and working on their own versions of the same idea.
Notable characteristics: Inventors feel a constant pressure to stay one step ahead. Their value to the business comes not from radical innovation, but from consistently feeding the business with new offerings.
Group Three: Available and Essential
Percent of the working population: 1 out of 10
6. Persuaders
Persuaders are essential for not just growth, but survival. They not only add value to the health and well-being of the business by leading or assisting in important negotiations, they include all the people on the revenue side of the ledger. They are marketing directors and sales managers and the copywriters who write the scripts that salespeople use to make and close their presentations.
The best Persuaders enjoy their work because they have a genuine feeling that completing the sale is not only good for the business, but good for the customer, too. Their superpower is the ability to read and respond to the thoughts and feelings of their customers, moment by moment, throughout the sales process. When they sense hesitation, confusion, or resistance, they make adjustments – changing their language, their tone, or their approach in real time and keeping the sale alive when a less perceptive salesperson would lose it.
Persuaders are enormously valuable to the business they work for because the difference in selling performance is not incremental, it’s substantial. They turn interest into revenue, and they do it consistently.
Without good Persuaders, revenues flatten and eventually fall – and soon after that, profits are reduced to zero.
Notable characteristics: Smart. Inventive. Self-confident. Good with words. Some persuaders sell in person, some on the phone, and some, the copywriters, without any direct contact at all. But they all know why and how people make decisions, especially buying decisions, and they use that understanding to sell them things.
7. Strategists
Strategists look at business challenges in terms of cause and effect and like to solve problems by analyzing data. They are quick and proficient learners when it comes to understanding market dynamics, competitive positioning, and how different parts of the sales and marketing apparatus of a business fit together. Thus, they are not just planners, but capable of developing coherent approaches to marketing, product development, customer service, and operations.
Strategists tend to step back from the day-to-day activity of the business and think about direction – what markets to pursue, how to position the product, how to allocate resources, and how to improve efficiency across functions. They are good at seeing patterns and connecting dots that others miss.
A good Strategist can be immensely valuable to a growing business – and, relative to the other personality types, they are easier to find. There are many smart, well-educated people in the job market who understand business strategy in theory and can speak intelligently about it across multiple domains.
Notable characteristics: Better than average intelligence, analytical ability, and the ability to break down challenges into component features and then reinvent marketing systems by fixing the broken features while preserving those that still work.
Group Four: Available and Necessary
Percent of the working population: 1 out of 5 (for the good ones)
8. Soldiers
Soldiers prefer working within a defined mission rather than creating one themselves. Thus, they are not just willing but dependable in carrying out plans designed by Starters, Growers, and Inventors.
Once assigned a role, Soldiers focus on doing their job well and supporting the objectives of the team. They are not interested in being on top or running everything. They know that they don’t have the appetite – or, in many cases, the skills – for that kind of responsibility, and they are perfectly fine with it. They take satisfaction in being the right-hand person to someone important in the business and often derive a sense of purpose and status from that relationship.
Soldiers are very good at bringing order to chaos. When things get messy – and they always do after the Starters, Growers, and Inventors have done their thing – Soldiers step in and make sure the work actually gets done. They follow through, execute the plan, and keep the machine moving. They take pride in being the ones who can be counted on when things would otherwise start to fall apart.
Notable characteristics: Enthusiasm, reliability, discipline, and respect for hierarchies. They are also honest, hardworking, and grateful for any and all opportunities they come across.
9. Solvers
Solvers have analytical, problem-oriented personalities – i.e., they enjoy confronting difficult problems and figuring out workable solutions. Thus, they are not just reactive troubleshooters, but often the people others turn to when something breaks, stalls, or stops working altogether.
Once a problem is identified, Solvers dig into the details, isolate the cause, and work methodically until it is resolved. They are not trying to run the business. They know their strength lies in solving problems, and they are most comfortable when given something specific to fix.
Like Soldiers, they are especially valuable in fast-growing companies, where problems multiply quickly. They take pride in being called in when something has gone wrong because they know that without someone fixing those problems, the business would eventually grind to a halt.
Notable characteristics: Solvers are smart, analytical, mentally flexible, and disciplined and tenacious when given problems to solve. They are motivated by the ego gratification they feel when fixing problems others have given up on.
10. Tenders
Tenders have stabilizing, maintenance-oriented personalities – i.e., they are attentive to the ongoing health of the organization and the systems that keep it functioning. Thus, they are not just cleaners of messes, but caretakers of processes, relationships, and standards that would otherwise deteriorate over time.
Tenders are inspired by solving problems and minimizing mistakes. They work instinctively and persistently toward that end. Once in position, they focus on keeping things running smoothly – cleaning up after disruption, maintaining order, and preventing small issues from becoming large ones. They are not driven to be in charge. They understand their role, and they value it.
Notable characteristics: Conscientiousness, patience, organization, and a preference for predictability.
